Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
10/6/2022
When did you last encounter you?
What might be your evaluation?
I’m reading a book by Kent Ingle called the 9 Disciplines of Enduring Leadership. The doctor told him he had a life-threatening case of sugar diabetes. He didn’t want to become dependent on medication to manage his irresponsibility. He needed to become more self-disciplined if he was going to win the battle against his own bad habits.
He had an “aha” moment. He got me thinking about the “stewardship of my life” and how it’s my responsibility to manage everything God has entrusted to me. That includes my health, but also my time, talents, resources, influence, leadership, family, and other components of life.
So again, I have to ask you, you are a steward of what?
And are you stewarding or are you caught in the wave of busyness?
Our responsibilities can’t be separated into disconnected silos: the parts are all linked.
This may not seem like a profound spiritual truth.
Honestly, it’s not deep, but it is foundational.
Life is interconnected, and we ALL have the responsibility to manage it according to God‘s divine design. Leadership is all about faithfully exercising our minds, bodies, influence, and all that God has given us. That sounds good but what does that mean practically? If you could encounter you… evaluate you…what would your assessment be of you?
Nowhere in the Bible does God tell us that we can better serve him when we let our habits take control of our lives. That’s not in the Bible, but it’s how too many of us live. I know because I tried it.
Life is vitally interconnected. Discipline is the management of your life to prepare and position yourself for your divine design! Discipleship and stewardship are one and the same! Discipline brings order to life,
and that’s absolutely required
if we are going to be good stewards of the call to leadership.
We must pay the price to get to the next level of any pursuit in life. Millions of high school students participate in sports, but only a fraction ever make it to the professional level. You need more than natural talent. Making it to the next level requires dedication and determination.
When my life is in alignment with God and I am continually learning and growing, I won’t have to fear “getting stuck”. I’ll experience the truth of Romans 12;2 where Paul says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God‘s will is his good, pleasing and perfect will”.
The Greek word translated renewing is derived from the word that means renovate. Professional house fixer-uppers go into a home and decide what to keep, what to reuse and what to replace. Similarly, when God begins transforming our thought processes, we allow him to renovate our lives. He will show us what to keep, what to reuse, and what to replace.
That’s how the Holy Spirit works.
Hebrews 12:11“For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those
who have been trained by it”.
Each of us needs a renovation. We need God to change the way we think because every action is preceded by a mental process. When my thinking is aligned with God‘s principle, my actions have a better chance of aligning with him. That won’t happen if we aren’t disciplined and take action.
Isaiah 1:19 “If you are willing and obedient (disciplined),
you shall eat the good of the land”.
It’s at the core of many things we accept as normal today. If we aren’t allowing the Holy Spirit to continually renovate our minds, we will follow cultural trends and compromise our divine design and calling. Many believers are in a spiritual crisis that parallels the physical turmoil of so many people physically.
None of us mean for their life to get out of control. We are often oblivious and never see the warning signs. We simply drift toward spiritual lethargy without any point of reference to guide us.
You can’t fulfill God’s destiny without discipline!
Proverbs 25:28
“A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls”.
